Firefox user profiles stored in strange directories

Sun Dec 11 11:47:02 PST 2005

That did it, thanks!

bsdlogical

Jeremy Messenger wrote:

> On Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:30:37 -0600, bsdlogical
> <kwlogical at bellsouth.net>  wrote:
>
>> I've recently noticed that Firefox stores profiles (in the ~/.mozilla
>> directory) under unreadable characters. At first glance I thought they
>> were Unicode, and my terminal couldn't read them. However, attempts at
>> reading them as Unicode characters have failed. The following is
>> thedirectory hierarchy starting at ~/.mozilla:
>> ===
>> bsdlogical at krypton$ ls -lahR .mozilla
>> total 16
>> drwx------   2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ?d&(
>> drwx------   2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ?d&(0??
>> drwx------   2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ?d&(p??
>> drwx------   3 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ?d&(???
>> drwx------   2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ?d&(???
>> drwx------   7 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  53 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   3.5K Dec  8 22:18 ..
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(:
>> total 4
>> drwx------  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  7 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ..
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(0??:
>> total 4
>> drwx------  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  7 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ..
>> -rw-r-----  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical     0B Dec  8 22:18 console.log
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(p??:
>> total 6
>> drwx------  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  7 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ..
>> -rw-r-----  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   624B Dec  8 22:18 console.log
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(???:
>> total 6
>> drwx------  3 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  7 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ..
>> drwx------  6 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.0K Dec  8 22:20
>> 7mvpapea.default
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(???/7mvpapea.default:
>> total 1128
>> drwx------  6 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.0K Dec  8 22:20 .
>> drwx------  3 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ..
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical     0B Dec  8 22:18 .parentlock
>> drwxr-xr-x  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 Cache
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   685K Dec  8 22:18 XUL.mfasl
>> drwx------  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 bookmarkbackups
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    16K Dec  8 22:18 bookmarks.html
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    64K Dec  8 22:19 cert8.db
>> drwxr-xr-x  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 chrome
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    97B Dec  8 22:18 
>> compatibility.ini
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   121K Dec  8 22:18 compreg.dat
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   499B Dec  8 22:19 cookies.txt
>> drwxr-xr-x  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 extensions
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   178B Dec  8 22:18
>> extensions.cache
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   183B Dec  8 22:18 extensions.ini
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   2.3K Dec  8 22:18 extensions.rdf
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   207B Dec  8 22:20 formhistory.dat
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.2K Dec  8 22:20 history.dat
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    64K Dec  8 22:19 key3.db
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   766B Dec  8 22:20 localstore.rdf
>> lrwxr-xr-x  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    16B Dec  8 22:18 lock ->
>> 127.0.0.1:+93065
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   287B Dec  8 22:18 mimeTypes.rdf
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   479B Dec  8 22:18 prefs.js
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   752B Dec  8 22:18 search.rdf
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    64K Dec  8 22:18 secmod.db
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    89K Dec  8 22:18 xpti.dat
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(???/7mvpapea.default/Cache:
>> total 134
>> drwxr-xr-x  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  6 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.0K Dec  8 22:20 ..
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    24K Dec  8 22:20 _CACHE_001_
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    28K Dec  8 22:20 _CACHE_002_
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    76K Dec  8 22:20 _CACHE_003_
>> -rw-------  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   276B Dec  8 22:19 _CACHE_MAP_
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(???/7mvpapea.default/bookmarkbackups:
>> total 20
>> drwx------  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  6 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.0K Dec  8 22:20 ..
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    16K Dec  8 22:18
>> bookmarks-2005-12-08.html
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(???/7mvpapea.default/chrome:
>> total 8
>> drwxr-xr-x  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  6 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.0K Dec  8 22:20 ..
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.1K Dec  8 22:18
>> userChrome-example.css
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   663B Dec  8 22:18
>> userContent-example.css
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(???/7mvpapea.default/extensions:
>> total 4
>> drwxr-xr-x  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  6 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   1.0K Dec  8 22:20 ..
>>
>> .mozilla/?d&(???:
>> total 6
>> drwx------  2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 .
>> drwx------  7 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Dec  8 22:18 ..
>> -rw-r--r--  1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical    34B Dec  8 22:18 profiles.ini
>> ===
>> On another machine, the top of the hierarchy looks like this:
>> ===
>> bsdlogical at argon$ ls -lah .mozilla
>> total 12
>> drwxr-xr-x   4 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Nov  5 18:20 .
>> drwxr-xr-x  60 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   4.0K Dec  8 19:18 ..
>> -rw-r--r--   1 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   335B Sep  5 13:25 appreg
>> drwxr-xr-x   3 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Sep  5 13:25 firefox
>> drwxr-xr-x   2 bsdlogical  bsdlogical   512B Nov  5 18:20 plugins
>> ===
>> This problem has occurred since version 1.0.4 or so. In addition,
>> Firefox sometimes randomly creates a new profile. Besides being a minor
>> annoyance (favorites and settings disappear), it is also unpredictable.
>> ===
>> bsdlogical at krypton$ uname -a
>> FreeBSD krypton.bsdlogical.com 5.4-STABLE FreeBSD 5.4-STABLE #2: Mon Jul
>> 18 11:41:51 EDT 2005
>> root at krypton.bsdlogical.com:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/KRYPTON  i386
>> ===
>> I'm using Firefox 1.5 at the moment (I haven't experienced the random
>> creation of a new profile, but the strange characters still persist -
>> even after forcing Firefox to regenerate the ~/.mozilla directory). Has
>> anyone had such problems before?
>
>
> Read the rest follow up in here:
>
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-gnome/2005-November/012993.html
>
>
> Cheers,
> Mezz
>
>> -bsdlogical
>
>
>